Expanding product variety and increasing the efficiency of operations are often challenging issues for manufactures. In this regard, the expansion of product variety and/or increase in the efficiency of operations may have to account for variables such as consumer preference, economic considerations, product performance requirements, as well as technical hurdles that may be associated with producing a product, such as those that may occur when attempting to produce complex, multiphase substances.
One method used to manufacturer consumer products that contain complex, multiphase substance, such as emulsions, is the batch process. Emulsions produced using the batch process frequently contain a water-immiscible phase and an aqueous phase. Often, a first step in the production of such emulsions involves separately preparing the aqueous phase and the water-immiscible phase. The final product may be an emulsion produced by shearing the aqueous and water-immiscible phases in large vessels. Although batch processing may offer some advantages like a variability in the production rate, batch processing may present disadvantages like long processing times and difficulties in scaling up to larger batches. In this regard, a manufacturer may experience surpluses and/or stock-outs of certain consumer products directly or indirectly because of the relatively long processing times for batch processing and difficulties in scaling up. Furthermore, these disadvantages may also impact the variety of products a manufacturer may offer.
One approach for expanding product variety and increasing the efficiency of producing end products is to prolong the point of product differentiation (i.e. defer when the end-product acquires its unique identities). However, such strategies for reducing the lead-time for redesigning products often present unique challenges that must be solved and may vary on the type of end-product desired. For example, with respect to the production of complex, multiphase substances, the unpredictability of such substances may present technical hurdles like instability when attempting to prolong the point of product differentiation. Thus, there is exists a need for developing new processes for producing consumer products that contain complex, multiphase substances than can expand product variety and increase the efficiency of producing end products without some or all of the drawbacks associated with other manufacturing methods like batch processing.